lat and very high and mighty refusal. We know from
another instance that Sydney was indisposed to take "No" for an answer.
However he obtained, besides his place at the Foundling, preacherships
in two proprietary chapels, and seems to have had both business and
pleasure enough on his hands during his London sojourn, which was about
the same length as his Edinburgh one. It was, however, much more
profitable, for in three years the ministry of "All the Talents" came
in, the Holland House interest was exerted, and the Chancellor's living
of Foston, near York, valued at five hundred pounds a year, was given to
Sydney. He paid for it, after a fashion which in a less zealous and
convinced Whig might seem a little dubious, by the famous lampoons of
the _Plymley Letters_, advocating the claims of Catholic emancipation,
and extolling Fox and Grenville at the expense of Perceval and Canning.
Very edifying is it to find Sydney Smith objecting to this latter that
he is a "diner out," a "maker of jokes and parodies," a trifler on
important subjects--in fact each and all of the things which the Rev.
Sydney Smith himself was, in a perfection only equalled by the object of
his righteous wrath. But of Peter more presently.

Even his admiring biographers have noticed, with something of a chuckle,
the revenge which Perceval, who was the chief object of Plymley's
sarcasm, took, without in the least knowing it, on his lampooner. Had it
not been for the Clergy Residence Bill, which that very respectable, if
not very brilliant, statesman passed in 1808, and which put an end to
perhaps the most flagrant of all then existing abuses, Sydney, the enemy
of abuses, would no doubt have continued with a perfectly clear
conscience to draw the revenues of Foston, and while serving it by a
curate, to preach, lecture, dine out, and rebuke Canning for making
jokes, in London. As it was he had to make up his mind, though he
obtained a respite from the Archbishop, to resign (which in the
recurring frost of Whig hopes was not to be thought of), to exchange,
which he found impossible, or to bury himself in Yorkshire. This was a
real hardship upon him, because Foston, as it was, was uninhabitable,
and had had no resident clergyman since the seventeenth century. But
whatever bad things could be said of Sydney (and I really do not know
what they are, except that the combination of a sharp wit, a ready pen,
and strong political prejudices sometimes made him abuse